Ceramic block filters offer several advantages over lumped component filters. The blocks are relatively easy to manufacture, rugged, and relatively compact. In the basic ceramic block filter design, the resonators are formed by typically cylindrical passages, called through-holes, extending through the block from the long narrow side to the opposite long narrow side. The block is substantially plated with a conductive material (i.e. metallized) on all but one of its six (outer) sides and on the inside walls formed by the resonator holes.
One of the two opposing sides containing through-hole openings is not fully metallized, but instead bears a metallization pattern designed to couple input and output signals through the series of resonators. This patterned side is conventionally labeled the top of the block, though the “top” designation may also be applied to the side opposite the surface mount contacts when referring to a filter in the board-mounted orientation. In some designs, the pattern may extend to sides of the block, where input/output electrodes are formed.
The reactive coupling between adjacent resonators is affected, at least to some extent, by the physical dimensions of each resonator, by the orientation of each resonator with respect to the other resonators, and by aspects of the top surface metallization pattern. Interactions of the electromagnetic fields within and around the block are complex and difficult to predict.
These filters may also be equipped with an external metallic shield attached to and positioned across the open-circuited end of the block in order to cancel undesired coupling between non-adjacent resonators and other components of the RF application device.
Although such RF signal filters have received widespread commercial acceptance since the 1980s, efforts at improvement on this basic design continued.
In the interest of allowing wireless communication providers to provide additional service, governments worldwide have allocated new higher RF frequencies for commercial use. To better exploit these newly allocated frequencies, standard setting organizations have adopted bandwidth specifications with compressed transmit and receive bands as well as individual channels.
Coupled with the higher frequencies and crowded channels are the consumer market trends towards ever smaller wireless communication devices (e.g. handsets) and longer battery life. In particular, wireless device designers are concerned with reducing the board height, i.e. required clearance, of wireless components such as filters. Technologies now competing with monoblock ceramic filters such as film bulk acoustic resonators (FBAR) in some cases offer reduced board height requirements. These technologies are relatively more expensive, however.
Accordingly, this invention pertains to providing smaller monoblock ceramic filters without sacrificing filtering performance.